Of the 50 percent of people surveyed who were concerned about social networking privacy, 23 percent are very concerned and 27 percent were concerned.  “We’re in an era of information. Some people are concerned, reluctant and skittish about the extent of online information. There’s a privacy element that some people feel is getting lost,” Dr. Lee Miringoff, director of the Institute told Reuters.  “It doesn’t take much to increase the concern factor and when headlines start blaring about breakdowns in privacy, that goes a long way to raising people’s concerns.”

While half the population being concerned about privacy is a high number, I’m sure the figure will continue to climb.  My fear is that those who aren’t concerned simply haven’t given the issue much thought, and have yet to be burned by, say, a potential employer that doesn’t like what it sees on a job applicant’s Facebook wall.

The oldest Americans are the most worried. 65 percent of those 60 and older have some degree of concern about their privacy on a social networking site.  Women with a social networking profile are more concerned about their privacy than men.  A majority of women — 57 percent — have some level of anxiety about the issue compared with 43 percent of men.

The study of shoppers in Pittsburgh was conducted by three scholars from Carnegie Mellon University, and reported by Steve Lohr in the New York Times.

The research paper describes a field experiment at a Pittsburgh shopping mall. People were given choices between two kinds of gift cards: a $10 gift card that was anonymous and a $12 gift card that would include personal information (and transactions made with the card would be linked to the holder’s name).

One group of people was presented first with the $10 card, and told they could trade it for a $12 card. About half switched to the $12 card, and half refused the offer.

Another group was first given the $12 card, and asked if they wanted to switch to the $10 card, trading cash for greater privacy. Less that 10 percent switched.

It was the same choice, only presented differently. And the research was structured so the sample groups were as comparable as possible.

What conclusion to draw? “When you have privacy, you value it more,” said Alessandro Acquisti [one of the paper’s authors and an associate professor in information technology and public policy.] “But when the starting point is that we feel we don’t have privacy, we value privacy far less.”

So Mr. Acquisti says those experts who say people don’t care about privacy are off-base. Instead, he said, the perception that people place little value on privacy is shaped by their low expectations, which Mr. Acquisti termed the “continual psychological conditioning that we don’t have privacy, that our personal information is widely available and we can’t control that.”

“In our everyday lives,” Mr. Acquisti concluded, “we are more like those people presented the $12 card.”

A defining issue this decade is sure to be how our society grapples the issue of privacy.  We will be tempted daily with the $10 vs. $12 choice.

I for one, am both a transparency advocate and a privacy advocate. Transparency is an opportunity and even obligation for corporations and other institutions.  But it is not an opportunity or obligation of individuals. Individuals have the obligation to withhold and protect their personal information.  Let me explain.

In MacroWikinomics (September 28, 2010), Anthony Williams and I look at how the Net is finally becoming the basis for commerce, work, entertainment, healthcare, learning and much human discourse, and how we are the better for it.   But one consequence of these digital interactions is the spinoff of a staggering and ever-increasing volume of data. At Zeitgeist, Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes that between the dawn of civilization and 2003 there were 5 exabytes of data collected (an exabyte equals 1 quintillion bytes). Today 5 exabytes of data gets collected every two days.

This has big implications for companies.  People and institutions interacting with firms have unprecedented access to information about corporate behavior, operations, and performance. Armed with new tools to find information, a variety of stakeholders now scrutinize the firm like never before, informing others and organizing collective responses.

Customers can evaluate confidently the true worth of products and services. Employees share formerly secret information about corporate strategy, management and challenges.  To collaborate effectively, companies and their business partners have no choice but to share intimate knowledge.  Powerful institutional investors today own or manage most wealth, and they are developing x-ray vision.  Finally, in a world of instant communications, whistleblowers, inquisitive media, and Googling, citizens and communities routinely put firms under the microscope.

A welcome upshot of increased scrutiny is that business integrity is on the rise.   Companies need to do good – act with integrity – not just to secure a healthy business environment, but for their own sustainability and competitive advantage.  Firms that exhibit ethical values and transparency have discovered that they can be more competitive and more profitable.  Transparency is no longer simply an obligation to report information to an external party like a regulator or an institutional investor; it’s a new competitive force and an essential precondition for building productive relationships with stakeholders.

So far, so good.  But the growing tsunami of data generated daily by digital interactions isn’t restricted to corporations.  A lot of this data pertains to individuals, and much of it is controlled by third parties. Practical obscurity – the basis for privacy norms throughout history – is fast disappearing. More and more aspects of our lives are becoming observable, linkable and identifiable by others. Thanks to networked computing technologies, this personal data is archived online and will be forever searchable.

But this availability of personal information isn’t just something that is being done to the public, it is being done by the public.  Many of us are willing accomplices in dissolving our own privacy rights, in exchange for new services, conveniences, and efficiencies.  In 2005, prior to Facebook’s arrival, who would have predicted that hundreds of millions of people would be voluntarily giving up detailed data about themselves, their activities, their likes/dislikes, etc. online every day? It’s pretty clear that everyone gives away too much of their personal information on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. There are probably thousands of new graduates this year who won’t get that dream job because the employer did a “reference check” online and found them doing something inappropriate.

This development is turning traditional privacy laws and regulations upside down. Privacy and data protection laws emphasize the responsibility of organizations to collect, use, retain and disclose (”manage”) personal information in a confidential manner. In contrast, collaborative networks encourage individuals to directly and voluntarily publish granular data about themselves, such as tagged photos, preferences/settings/likes, friends’ lists, and groups joined. The integration of personal profiles on networks such as Facebook with other online sites, communities and applications increases the damage.

Our digital footprints and shadows are being gathered, bit by bit, into a hundred thousand simultaneous locations. Toss in the emerging “augmented reality” tools where you point your mobile device at the street and it gives you real-time information about the world around you–everything from recognizing the faces of people nearby to letting you know about all the people on Twitter in your vicinity–and we can be sure that a ton of personal information about most of us is deeply and irrevocably embedded into the fabric of the Internet and available to the world.

To my astonishment, I run into people who argue this is a good thing, championing the notion of a new era of personal transparency. Perhaps this is what was confusing the Zeitgeist privacy advocate.  For example. in the recently released book, The Facebook Effect, author David Kirkpatrick reveals that some of the social network’s management thinks that transparency is not just an opportunity for companies and other institutions to generate trust and be more effective. They think it’s an opportunity for individuals to do the same. The more transparent we are, the more moral our behavior will be. I’ve often wondered why Facebook has been plagued with so many privacy controversies in its short history.  Now I know why. The social media giant thinks that “more visibility makes us better people. Some claim, for example, that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.”

Some at Facebook refer to this as Radical Transparency – a term initially applied to institutions, and now being adapted to individuals.  “Our mission since day one has been to make society more open” says one senior Facebook executive.  And in an interview with Kirkpatrick, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly,” and that “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

It boggles the mind that someone as thoughtful as Mr. Zuckerberg would argue this. Of course we should have more than one online identity, just as we sensibly have multiple offline identities.  My family knows one version of me, and even then I share information with my wife that I don’t share with our children. Friends know more about me than my business acquaintances. Readers of my books and articles have another impression. And on and on. All of this is appropriate.

Transparency is the opportunity and even the obligation of institutions to communicate pertinent information to their stakeholders. Individuals have no such obligation. Personal information, be it biographical, biological, genealogical, historical, transactional, locational, relational, computational, vocational or reputational, is the stuff that makes up our modern identity. It must be managed responsibly. In fact, to have a secure life and self-determination, individuals have an obligation to themselves to protect their personal information. And institutions should be transparent about what they do with our personal information. Transparency and privacy go hand in hand.  Advocating individual privacy and institutional transparency simultaneously is not illogical; it is common sense.

Information privacy is the foundation of a free society, not just because of the harm that can occur from blackmail, identity fraud, impersonation, cyber-stalkers, and nosy employers. When data can be assembled into profiles, matched with other info and used to make (automated) judgments about (and decisions affecting) individuals, such as whether or not to hire them, or whether to admit entry, or to calculate benefits or terms of an offer, or to corroborate a claim, or discriminate against or manipulate, it should make us shudder to think about what it would be like to live in a world where all is known and nothing is forgotten. Senator Joe McCarthy or for that matter Hitler’s SS would been licking their lips as such a prospect. And in this volatile world can we assume that governments and people with power will always be benevolent?

Ultimately, in order to protect privacy, all of us will need to change our own online behavior. Impossible assignment, you say? Once again look to young people of the Net Generation to show the way. Recent research suggests that youth are already more diligent than older adults in protecting themselves. In a 2010 study, the Pew Internet Project found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves. This supports our findings and those of others who have argued that young people who have grown up digital are confronted with the privacy issue at an earlier age and come to grips with it earlier.

They were unimpressed, saying that their vision was to become the telephone of the 21st century. With fewer than 100 million users at the time, they estimated that they had only 5 per cent market share, and the challenge was simply to grow.

So they ignored my advice.  After reading David Kirkpatrick’s new book, The Facebook Effect, I have a better understanding of why. I had misinterpreted the question. Zuckerberg and Cohler weren’t asking me how to build a big business. They wanted advice on how to change the world.

All this comes through clearly in the book.  It was well known among industry insiders a couple of years ago that Kirkpatrick’s manuscript was overdue. Some felt he’d lose the window – that Facebook’s 15 minutes of fame, like those of Myspace, were coming to an end.

Kirkpatrick ignored them, spending another 18 months researching. Good call; the book appears just as Facebook has become the most popular destination on the Internet.

Our obsession is justified, as Kirkpatrick points out in the most meticulous and exhaustive exposition to date. Facebook has gone “from a dorm-room novelty to a company with an unbelievable 500 million users.” It defies the conventional wisdom that social networks are here today and gone tomorrow. It has become “a technological powerhouse with unprecedented influence across modern life, both public and private.” Facebook has the capability to do everything from linking us with friends to saving lives in the Haitian disaster. It may “be the fastest-growing company of any type in history.”

Yet, as Kirkpatrick notes, it has many wondering. What is happening to our privacy, to our social relationships, to our children? Are we turning into a world of exhibitionists, conformists and narcissists? Are we losing contact with the real world? Can one really have 500 friends? Are we counting on them too much for information, thus becoming less informed? Should the world be so reliant on one company?

Yet we keep signing up in droves. And a couple of weeks ago, the much ballyhooed, worldwide “quit Facebook day” was a resounding flop as more people joined than left.

Why? Facebook has become nothing less than the communications utility of the digital age. For Kirkpatrick, Facebook is now the over-arching common cultural experience for people worldwide, especially young people. The company owes its success to “the Facebook Effect” that happens “when the service puts people in touch with each other, often unexpectedly, about a common interest or problem. Facebook’s software makes information viral … rushing through groups and making people aware of something almost simultaneously, spreading … with unique ease like a virus or meme.”

Kirkpatrick was once Fortune magazine’s top technology writer, and his instincts naturally led him to an entrepreneurial narrative. He tells a gripping tale of how the company was created and came to such dominance. As someone who followed the story almost from day one, I was still enlightened, entertained and sometimes dumbfounded by the rich detail and juicy goings-on.

Kirkpatrick seems on a mission to rehabilitate Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and to a certain extent he succeeds, suggesting Zuckerberg’s reputation as the petulant, erratic, power-tripping brat who doesn’t give a damn is misguided. Rather, he is a very moral person who deeply cares about improving the state of the world.

A poignant story makes the case well. In 2005, Zuckerberg had a handshake agreement with investor Don Graham. Days later, at a restaurant meeting, Zuckerberg received a much more attractive offer. He excused himself, and when he didn’t return, Cohler  found him cross-legged in the bathroom, crying, torn by the moral dilemma. Rather than accepting the better offer, he called Graham, who was enormously impressed that a 20-year-old would behave like this, and let him off the hook.

One of the best stories details Zuckerberg’s controversial decision to turn down a $1-billion offer for the company. In 2006, Facebook was being courted by executives from Viacom, Yahoo and other companies. Zuckerberg kept resisting their offers and a deep rift developed between him and the venture capitalists who stood to gain a tenfold windfall. Everyone had agreed that if the bids got to $1-billion, they would consider a sale; sure enough, Yahoo came up with the magic number.

However, Zuckerberg, who controlled the five-member board, realized that “I don’t want to sell the company.” The VCs were furious but could do nothing.

Today the company is valued at somewhere between $10-billion and $30-billion.

However, Kirkpatrick finds a potential dark side. Take privacy, the issue that has plagued the company and angered countless people.

Reading the book, I had a stunning revelation: Facebook thinks that transparency is not just an opportunity for companies and other institutions to disclose pertinent information, and in so doing to be more trusted and effective. They believe it’s an opportunity for individuals to do so as well.

Facebook’s founders, Kirkpatrick says, believe that “more visibility makes us better people. Some claim, for example, that because of Facebook, young people today have a harder time cheating on their boyfriends or girlfriends. They also say that more transparency should make for a more tolerant society in which people eventually accept that everybody sometimes does bad or embarrassing things.”

Facebook does have good privacy controls (not used by most) and Zuckerberg believes that people should have the right to decide what to reveal. But we learn that these are more a means to an end, helping uneasy users feel comfortable as they make the inexorable transition to being more “open” with their personal information.

Kirkpatrick would have done well to elaborate on why this is dangerous, and why informational privacy is the foundation of a free society. In fact, transparency of institutions and privacy for individuals go hand in hand.

Kirkpatrick dramatically chronicles many of the company’s amazing contributions to solving social problems, from fighting kidnappers in Colombia to Barack Obama become president. One is left with a clear picture of the positive power of one of the most significant communications revolutions ever.

If you’re not familiar with InnoCentive, here is a thumbnail sketch:  It is a global, online marketplace where organizations in need of innovation–companies, academic institutions, public sector, and non-profit organizations–can utilize a global network of more than 200,000 of the world’s brightest problem solvers.  The company began as a start-up incubated by Eli Lilly. InnoCentive is now incorporated as an independent company, partnering with many different “seekers” in a variety of industries to revolutionize R&D practices. Seeker organizations post “challenges” on InnoCentive.com along with an appropriate award. “Solvers” submit solutions to the challenge. The seeker pays an award to the solver who best meets the solution requirements as outlined in the Challenge.

In Wikinomics, Anthony Williams and I cited InnoCentive as a brilliant example of crowd sourcing.  Smart companies understand that they cannot have all of the best and brightest thinkers on their payroll. An office equipment manufacturer or a camera manufacturer simply couldn’t afford the world’s best designers on a full-time basis. So these companies reach out to collaborate with companies such as Porsche to acquire their insights. Courtesy of the Internet, almost anyone can participate in this process.

Consider our story about the sea change in Procter and Gamble’s culture. About nine years ago P&G was struggling, and its market value had collapsed. Its new CEO, A.G. Lafley, realized that if P&G was going to grow at seven percent, it had to create a $5 billion business annually. It had to be an innovation engine. At the time there were 7,000 researchers employed by P&G. But it occurred to Lafley that there were hundreds of thousands of bright researchers that weren’t on the P&G payroll. So if P&G is looking for a molecule that will take red wine off a shirt, its R&D department goes to idea marketplaces such as InnoCentive.  P&G has developed deep expertise in Wikinomics. Now rather than the NIH syndrome—Not Invented Here—the company has evolved to PFE—Proudly Found Elsewhere.

The relevance of InnoCentive the Gulf oil spill crisis is obvious.  BP has a problem it clearly doesn’t know how to solve, and InnoCentive brings together hundreds of thousands of bright people who love to solve problems.  InnoCentive posted the oil spill challenge on April 30 and was inundated more than 900 suggestions.  There was no cash reward involved; all ideas were offered free of charge.  After weeks of ignoring the initiative, on June 5th BP contacted InnoCentive with a “positive tone and apparent eagerness to work together,” says CEO Spradlin.

But now BP says it is not interested in the InnoCentive ideas. The company says “the agreements BP would have to enter into with InnoCentive are too complex and burdensome to add to already overstretched workdays.”   As Spradlin notes on his blog, “These agreements are simple, allow us to use BP’s name without InnoCentive taking on liability, and set the price of engagement at $0.  Overstretched workdays?  Really? My faith in BP was already stretched, now it is gone.  The teams at BP lack an urgency to involve the outside world.”

I find BP’s attitude unconscionable. If BP lacks the resources to vet the many ideas InnoCentive could send its way, then it should reach out to its competitors for added help.  This spill is beyond BP’s issue; it is a crisis that should draw on the resources of the entire industry.  Companies such as Shell and Exxon should make available their top engineers to help vet the suggestions from InnoCentive and other people and companies wanting to help. The Save the Gulf initiative by nGenera illustrates the correct belief that good ideas can come from anywhere. We can’t afford BP to try to do this alone.

In a story published June 3^rd, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that “BP has received almost 35,000 ideas in just over a month on how best to clean up the millions of gallons of oil from the biggest spill in U.S. history. So far, only four have made it into testing.”  Ideas submitted online or by telephone are put through the Alternative Response Technology Triage Process.  They are first scrutinized by 70 workers, and the most promising are then reviewed by 43 engineers from BP, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other government agencies.

“If the ideas—which range from soaking up oil with human hair to enlisting oil-eating microbes—are seen as practical and don’t overlap with proposals already being explored, they’re sent to smaller teams of engineers to see if they can be applied,” says Businessweek. “About 800 proposals have made it to this stage, with just one-half of 1 percent of those in testing.” A BP spokesperson said most suggestions are duplicative or infeasible.

The BP Triage Process is looking for solutions to two specific problems: plugging the pipe that is spewing oil into the Gulf, and cleaning up the 2.5 millions of gallons a day that have already escaped.  But as President Obama said in his address last night from the Oval Office, the damage to the region goes far beyond the spill itself.  Tens of thousands of people have been thrown out of work, from the fisherman who are forbidden to go out to sea to the vendors who supply the more than 1,000 drilling rigs operating in the Gulf that have seen their operations shut down by the federal government’s six-month moratorium on off-shore drilling.

When enormous challenges present themselves, people have come together to share ideas about potential solutions. Humanity has a long tradition of coming together to solve shared problems.  The gulf oil spill is a disaster of global scale, so finding a solution is going to require sharing intellectual power on an equally global scale.  This disaster cries out for people all over the world – engineers and non-engineers alike – to come together to debate and discuss how best to clean beaches, rescue sea life, revive coastal economies and prevent future spills, as well as any other topic the global community might raise.

Today, thanks to the Internet, we have the tools we need to truly bring the world together in a 21^st century agora of ideas. To help address the many broader issues, I have decided, along with nGenera, the collaborative software company, to put online a brainstorming platform asking for suggestions from around the world on how best to help the Gulf recover in the months and years ahead.  Click here to go to the site.

Some countries are already experimenting with digital brainstorms. In December 2005, the government of Canada teamed up with IBM to implement Habitat Jam, an online forum that brought together over 39,000 people from 158 countries in a three-day online discussion about urban sustainability. A jam is a massive online discussion that develops actions out of a multiplicity of perspectives and expertise.  IBM began online “jamming” in 2001 as a means of engaging its 300,000-plus employees in every facet of the company’s operations—from corporate values to concrete solutions for growth, productivity, and innovation. With Habitat Jam, more than 600 actionable items were brought forth by participants, with more than 4,000 pages of rich dialogue on the problems, challenges, and opportunities of urban development. Ninety-one percent of Habitat Jam participants noted that the process brought together people who otherwise might never share ideas and information.

In a similar vein, the Obama administration is looking for ideas to restore the country’s ailing education system so that it can again be one of the best in the world.  You can see the Open Innovation Portal at https://innovation.ed.gov/

So please join us and share your views on what should be done.

The third takeway is the most interesting. Despite his resistance on some ideas, Dorsey says that “almost everything you see today in Twitter was invented by our users.”  Twitter’s home page question when it launched was “What is your status?”  which clearly shows its techie roots. It has gone through many iterations based on user feedback, including “What are you doing?” to the current “What’s happening?”

Dorsey says that today the company has evolved to the point where it acts “more or less as the editor of the user base, and editor of the usage.”  Twitter is a platform for its users innovations.  The @ symbol before a user name was not invented by anyone in the company.  “It was an innovation by the user base that we saw and decided to implement.  The RT for ReTweet was invented by users as well.”  The company initially resisted it because they thought it was ugly.  But Dorsey quickly came to see it as “a beautiful way to rebroadcast content in a powerful and efficient manner.” The hashtag was not invented by anyone in the company, because they thought that was ugly too.  Then they gave in.  The word tweet was not invented by anyone in the company and Twitter resisted it for a long time, but eventually it just took hold.

Despite Dorsey’s reluctance on some of these innovations, he clearly is now a convert to the wisdom of the masses, in true Wikinomics spirit.  No doubt he wonders what other changes the users have in store for his company.

An author self-publishing his or her book — also known as the “vanity press” —  has traditionally been viewed with a bit of disdain.  It usually meant that the author was unable to find a publisher willing to risk the time and money required to bring a book to market, either because the topic wasn’t interesting and/or the writing quality was poor.  Publishers want to be confident a book will sell well enough to cover the expense of printing and warehousing the book and promoting the author.

But the stigma of self-publishing may soon disappear. The book industry is ripe for reform.  It’s incredibly inefficient, with approximately 30 percent of books returned to the publisher because they didn’t sell.  Publishers cite this wastage as one reason they demand high fees, particularly from first-time authors.

But the arrival of devices such as Amazon’s Kindle in 2007 and now Apple’s wildly popular iPad, the cost of  printing, storage, shipping and wastage obviously disappears.  And with the Internet and social media, an author can acquire or maintain a high profile at relatively little cost.  So are publishers irrelevant?  Amazon thinks so. It announced earlier this year that it would pay authors 70 percent of an e-book’s selling price if the author bypassed publishers and dealt directly with Amazon.  Since authors typically receive only 15-20 percent royalty, Amazon’s offer will doubtless prove tempting. At the annual convention for the book industry that was just held in New York, one publisher suggested that within five years ebooks will account for half the market.

Prior to the Kindle, Amazon promoted the notion of self-publishing through its CreateSpace, a service that prints books one at a time in response to an individual order.  Authors upload their text and cover artwork, and Amazon does the rest.  CreateSpace also produces CDs and DVDs on demand.  The service offers access to more than two million titles, although not all books from the service are self-published. Publishers are also using the service to make available old titles that have gone out of print. Barnes and Noble unveiled its own version of CreateSpace two weeks ago, called Publt.

Back in my 1995 book the Digital Economy I talked about “disintermediation” arguing that the web threatened business activities in between producers and consumers.  I also introduced a term “re-intermediation” saying that the opportunities to create value in the new middle exceed the displacement of the old middle.  But I also noted that the leaders of the old middle are unlikely to be the ones to create find their place in the new. Will there be any publishers who step up to this opportunity?

“Contrary to the popular perception that younger users embrace a laissez-faire attitude about their online reputations, young adults are often more vigilant than older adults when it comes to managing their online identities,” said Mary Madden, lead author of the report released today from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

“Search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one’s identity online,” said Madden, “Many users are learning and refining their approach as they go–changing privacy settings on profiles, customizing who can see certain updates and deleting unwanted information about them that appears online.”

While the numbers show an increased awareness of one’s online identity through all age groups, those ages 18-29 are more likely than older adults to say:

• They take steps to limit the amount of personal information available about them online—44% of young adult internet users say this, compared with 33% of internet users between ages 30-49, 25% of those ages 50-64 and 20% of those ages 65 and older.
• They change privacy settings – 71% of social networking users ages 18-29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online. By comparison, just 55% of SNS users ages 50-64 have changed the default settings.
• They delete unwanted comments – 47% social networking users ages 18-29 have deleted comments that others have made on their profile, compared with just 29% of those ages 30-49 and 26% of those ages 50-64.
• They remove their name from photos – 41% of social networking users ages 18-29 say they have removed their name from photos that were tagged to identify them, compared with just 24% of SNS users ages 30-49 and only 18% of those ages 50-64.

This is good news.  But I fear it is because of earlier bad news. Young adults were the biggest early adopters of social media and thus the first to be seriously burned by sites having little regard for their privacy.  As such, they unfortunately served as the privacy canaries in the Internet coalmine.  So when asked today how much of the time they think they can trust social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, 28% of SNS users ages 18-29 say “never.” By comparison, a smaller segment of older users express such cautious views; 19% of SNS users ages 30-49 and 14% of those ages 50-64 say they never trust the sites.

As the report documents, there are good reasons for all of us to be more vigilant. Online reputation matters; 44% of online adults have searched for information about someone whose services or advice they seek in a professional capacity. More and more people are likely to work for an employer that has policies about how employees present themselves online and co-workers and business competitors now keep closer tabs on one another.  And of course, it is not simply a question of what information that you’ve posted that you let others see. You’ve got to be careful about what thoughts or photos others post about you on social networking profiles, photo- and video-sharing sites, Twitter, and blogs.

The results in this report are based on data from telephone interviews conducted between August 18 and September 14, 2009, among a total sample of 2,253 adults, age 18 and older, including 560 cell phone interviews.

It’s been three years since Anthony and I wrote Wikinomics, which explored how mass collaboration was changing the way businesses communicate, compete, and succeed in the new global marketplace. But much has changed in three years, and the principles of Wikinomics are now more powerful than ever.

In this new age of networked intelligence, businesses and communities are bypassing crumbling institutions. We are altering the way our financial institutions and governments operate; how we educate our children; and how the healthcare, newspaper, and energy industries serve their customers.  In the book we dissect why institutions are faltering and how they should change in order to stay relevant and effective.

To me MacroWikinomics is more than just a book; I view it as a mission. We need to reinvent many facets of society, and I will do my best to help that happen.

Naturally there will be a MacroWikonomics.com, which will host discussions, robust I hope, on how to make our MacroWikinomics vision come to fruition.  We will also post outtakes from the first draft that didn’t make it into the final version.  The first draft was 800 pages and we whittled it down to 400 pages.

I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with Anthony again. He was an effortless partner on Wikinomics three years ago and on this book he is even more brilliant.  I’m proud of what we have accomplished. The book will be on the shelves this September but it can be pre-ordered now at any online bookstore.

Thank you for your patience.